Crazy Bad 5000 Alienware Gaming PC: R13 Aurora Tear-Down
video description
Come on, Dell, you're embarrassing yourselves putting out garbage like this on the desktop market, while you actually design some sweet workstation and server chassis, the Precision 7920 tower is a beast of beauty as blown-up images show.
Date: 2022-04-24
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Comments and reviews: 9
Jan
Looking at this, I am horrified at what 5k can get you in a high end pre-built machine.
I have bought a pre-built for almost 3k(converted price from my currency) at the top of the GPU pricing/availability crisis from a national PC building company called BARBONE (belongs to TSBohemia-cz electronics/PC parts store chain, Their pre-builts make sense for the most part, but you can make custom orders from them as well if you dont wanna put it together yourself, their cable management needs a bit of work, though - it was a rats nest in mine) and it is all standard pieces, based mostly on MSI parts but everything works, cooling is a bit overkill and it looks great, I bet it tops this 5K pre-built (my specs below) based on the fact mine does not overheat or throttle even when stress-testing/bench-marking both CPU and GPU at the same time!
I cant say I have any regrets even now. Maybe quite a bit of added price was RGB, which I never had before nor care about but it is starting to change my mind.
I know now that I have overpaid because of the GPU crisis - looking at individual parts the GPU was around half the price of the whole thing.
It is:
R7 5800X
nVidia 3080 Ventus 3X 10G OC
32GB Kingston Fury Beast 3200 CL16
MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk
MSI MPG A850GF PSU
CA200M case
MSI MAG Core Liquid 360R water cooling (i found it can fail in a short time sometimes. Will replace it if things go south).
I changed out the 3 front 120mm fans for 140mm and all 3 120mm fans on the radiator because it was having odd resonances in many places of the curve. - cost around 100 and cools much better - especially GPU from the front fans cos I set them on an aggressive PWM curve to help it when gaming.
reply
Looking at this, I am horrified at what 5k can get you in a high end pre-built machine.
I have bought a pre-built for almost 3k(converted price from my currency) at the top of the GPU pricing/availability crisis from a national PC building company called BARBONE (belongs to TSBohemia-cz electronics/PC parts store chain, Their pre-builts make sense for the most part, but you can make custom orders from them as well if you dont wanna put it together yourself, their cable management needs a bit of work, though - it was a rats nest in mine) and it is all standard pieces, based mostly on MSI parts but everything works, cooling is a bit overkill and it looks great, I bet it tops this 5K pre-built (my specs below) based on the fact mine does not overheat or throttle even when stress-testing/bench-marking both CPU and GPU at the same time!
I cant say I have any regrets even now. Maybe quite a bit of added price was RGB, which I never had before nor care about but it is starting to change my mind.
I know now that I have overpaid because of the GPU crisis - looking at individual parts the GPU was around half the price of the whole thing.
It is:
R7 5800X
nVidia 3080 Ventus 3X 10G OC
32GB Kingston Fury Beast 3200 CL16
MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk
MSI MPG A850GF PSU
CA200M case
MSI MAG Core Liquid 360R water cooling (i found it can fail in a short time sometimes. Will replace it if things go south).
I changed out the 3 front 120mm fans for 140mm and all 3 120mm fans on the radiator because it was having odd resonances in many places of the curve. - cost around 100 and cools much better - especially GPU from the front fans cos I set them on an aggressive PWM curve to help it when gaming.
reply
DCG909
Oh, fudge, only seen this after the poll....
As a former sheetmetal engineer/draughtsman, I feel like the meeting about the case went like this:
Exec:
Yo, we've still got some old cases that don't sell anymore in stock, what can we do with them?
Marketing:
Well, we could retrofit some snap on parts and sell them as newer systems?
Exec:
Great idea, make it so!
Engineering:
So are we talking about a low end corporate type pc? Shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Exec:
Nah, those don'y fech enough money to compensate the engineering, make it a gaming one.
Marketing:
Yea, and add rgb and a side window, those are the rage these days.
We've got some visuals we'd like to incorporate, sleek curves and such.
Engineering:
These cases aren't really suited for modern gaming hardware, too much heat and such.
Marketing & exec:
Ah, you'll find a way, like always :)
Exec:
Profits for these pc's is through the roof, and we get to lose some excess stock, so a few adapters won't be a problem.
Oh and don't forget to make it a single pcb, so they have to come back to us when they want to replace something.
Engineering:
.... Ok, you're the boss, but I don't think it'll end well...
reply
Oh, fudge, only seen this after the poll....
As a former sheetmetal engineer/draughtsman, I feel like the meeting about the case went like this:
Exec:
Yo, we've still got some old cases that don't sell anymore in stock, what can we do with them?
Marketing:
Well, we could retrofit some snap on parts and sell them as newer systems?
Exec:
Great idea, make it so!
Engineering:
So are we talking about a low end corporate type pc? Shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Exec:
Nah, those don'y fech enough money to compensate the engineering, make it a gaming one.
Marketing:
Yea, and add rgb and a side window, those are the rage these days.
We've got some visuals we'd like to incorporate, sleek curves and such.
Engineering:
These cases aren't really suited for modern gaming hardware, too much heat and such.
Marketing & exec:
Ah, you'll find a way, like always :)
Exec:
Profits for these pc's is through the roof, and we get to lose some excess stock, so a few adapters won't be a problem.
Oh and don't forget to make it a single pcb, so they have to come back to us when they want to replace something.
Engineering:
.... Ok, you're the boss, but I don't think it'll end well...
reply
FAZOR921
Absolutely baffles me that they can sell this polished turd for five grand
Not only could you go almost anywhere else and get the same for less with off the shelf parts but even if you go to someone like Origin or PowerGPU and spend that kind of money at least it's built by a company that somewhat respects the components they're putting in and gives a damn about the overall performance
Five grand for a pretty furnace
Shame, not all of their products are garbage, I'm using one of their UWs and it's great, the laptops are well engineered too
Insane that the product most people would relate them too, where it all really started has fallen to something that no one with a modicum of knowledge could recommend
reply
Absolutely baffles me that they can sell this polished turd for five grand
Not only could you go almost anywhere else and get the same for less with off the shelf parts but even if you go to someone like Origin or PowerGPU and spend that kind of money at least it's built by a company that somewhat respects the components they're putting in and gives a damn about the overall performance
Five grand for a pretty furnace
Shame, not all of their products are garbage, I'm using one of their UWs and it's great, the laptops are well engineered too
Insane that the product most people would relate them too, where it all really started has fallen to something that no one with a modicum of knowledge could recommend
reply
Pardalis
My bad take on these is always that the tool-less blue-plastic stuff is actually a joy to work with. HP, Lenovo and Dell all do it for their office/professional stuff. Replacing drives and fans by pulling on clips and yanking them out of hotswap bays is very satisfying! Very scifi, as if dealing with isolinear chips.
The issue is that it's all meant to fit together in one of a dozen configurations, is not customizable, and should ship with a printed manual. All of these are no issue with enterprise markets, but when you try and retrofit it to a gamer audience that expects industry-standard flexibility, it fails terribly.
reply
My bad take on these is always that the tool-less blue-plastic stuff is actually a joy to work with. HP, Lenovo and Dell all do it for their office/professional stuff. Replacing drives and fans by pulling on clips and yanking them out of hotswap bays is very satisfying! Very scifi, as if dealing with isolinear chips.
The issue is that it's all meant to fit together in one of a dozen configurations, is not customizable, and should ship with a printed manual. All of these are no issue with enterprise markets, but when you try and retrofit it to a gamer audience that expects industry-standard flexibility, it fails terribly.
reply
Tom
You are correct, the next video added to this train wreck of a PC case will be a lesson learned by Dell's pre-built rivals. Dell just like Apple will take no notice of performance or function over style and profit at the expense of the consumer. It is all about the marketing and advert budget. Someone has to pay that. That someone was YOU Steve. I hope you can at least make a case for this trainwreck using as many of the parts that you can as an entertaining project for us homebrew nerds hi. You want to see how I fitted my old spinning rust into a Lian Li smallish case hi to keep good cooling in the PSU bay hi.
reply
You are correct, the next video added to this train wreck of a PC case will be a lesson learned by Dell's pre-built rivals. Dell just like Apple will take no notice of performance or function over style and profit at the expense of the consumer. It is all about the marketing and advert budget. Someone has to pay that. That someone was YOU Steve. I hope you can at least make a case for this trainwreck using as many of the parts that you can as an entertaining project for us homebrew nerds hi. You want to see how I fitted my old spinning rust into a Lian Li smallish case hi to keep good cooling in the PSU bay hi.
reply
Andrew
It is kind of sad to see how far the Alienware brand has fallen. I remember when they produced machines that were expensive but they had a damn good reason for being expensive (OTT hardware). Now it just looks like Alienware is the same as the rest of the Dell consumer crap but with more plastic on the case.
Dell's server gear is pretty top notch, it is just their consumer stuff that is winning the fight to the bottom...
reply
It is kind of sad to see how far the Alienware brand has fallen. I remember when they produced machines that were expensive but they had a damn good reason for being expensive (OTT hardware). Now it just looks like Alienware is the same as the rest of the Dell consumer crap but with more plastic on the case.
Dell's server gear is pretty top notch, it is just their consumer stuff that is winning the fight to the bottom...
reply
Sith
Wow 5k. I reused my old RX570 8GB and built a i7 10th gen intel with proc, mb, ram and cooler for around 7-800. I would love a newer video card yet their prices are way outside my range since I am retired. This old one still works great and still does good on latest games and even streaming them. FYI I worked at Hell before they bought out Alienware and the systems back then were a quarter the cost for the exact same thing.
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Wow 5k. I reused my old RX570 8GB and built a i7 10th gen intel with proc, mb, ram and cooler for around 7-800. I would love a newer video card yet their prices are way outside my range since I am retired. This old one still works great and still does good on latest games and even streaming them. FYI I worked at Hell before they bought out Alienware and the systems back then were a quarter the cost for the exact same thing.
reply
TheBronx
Jeeeeeeez what a waste of money, and I am not only talking about the 5k. The amount of money invested into engineering to create this, WOW. Imagine being an engineer at Dell working on those clips, brackets, springs and shit. For what? For a case that performs worse than any 30 case. And on top of that, a case that is non compatible with any other motherboard in the market.
What a sad miserable life.
reply
Jeeeeeeez what a waste of money, and I am not only talking about the 5k. The amount of money invested into engineering to create this, WOW. Imagine being an engineer at Dell working on those clips, brackets, springs and shit. For what? For a case that performs worse than any 30 case. And on top of that, a case that is non compatible with any other motherboard in the market.
What a sad miserable life.
reply
Lance
An idea for a video I had would be for noise cancelling headphones. I know you talk a lot about cases and fan noise but I haven't seen a video by you on the other side of the spectrum which is headphones that cancel out or isolate noises. I coulda saved a lot of money just getting those instead of buying a new case. Water cooling and custom water loops aren't as necessary either.
reply
An idea for a video I had would be for noise cancelling headphones. I know you talk a lot about cases and fan noise but I haven't seen a video by you on the other side of the spectrum which is headphones that cancel out or isolate noises. I coulda saved a lot of money just getting those instead of buying a new case. Water cooling and custom water loops aren't as necessary either.
reply
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